The Royal Challengers Bangalore have a dismal record against the Chennai Super Kings in recent years. They have lost four out of their last six games against CSK, the most consistent side in the IPL. Overall, RCB have only seven wins out of 19 games against CSK’s 11 victories.
Ahead of the second qualifier match in Ranchi on Friday, RCB’s only consolation is that they had won their last encounter against CSK by five wickets at this venue last year. But this season, RCB have lost both their league phase matches against CSK by 27 and 24 runs.
A major difference between these two sides is that CSK are coming to this match after losing first qualifier to Mumbai India’s while RCB are fresh after beating the Rajasthan Royals comprehensively on Wednesday night.
All put together, this is the match between the two Indian captains – ever conquering Dhoni, who is India’s ODI and T20 captain, will be up in arms against RCB’s Virat Kohli, the skipper of the Indian Test team.
This match will also test CSK team – who were subject to some poor umpiring in the last game against Mumbai. Right from the beginning, Dhoni’s team has shown the character to fight against all odds. Quite fittingly, they became the table-toppers in the league stages and still looking good to go all the way.
They also have the team to believe so. Their opener Brendon McCullum may be missing from their line-up, his replacement Mike Hussey is not too bad either. At the age of 39, he can still whack the ball out of the park at will and can compete at this level with great intensity.
Dhoni will be looking go see Hussey come good like his other teammates against RCB. CSK, also need to fix their bowling woes, which saw them conceding too many runs in the Mumbai game.
CSK’s biggest challenge will be to stop the likes of Chris Gayle and AB de Villiers from playing their trademark game-changing knocks. Then, there are players like Kohli and Mandeep, who are waiting in the wings to maximise their efforts in the middle. Who will ultimately be taking the Mumbai outfit in the IPL final on Sunday? We have to wait till Friday night.
